What is 'Jackass'?
Has Canada been spared?
Alex, are you at Brown U.?
Ursula in North Bay, Ontario
who's daughter studies math at Brown, but is presently in Beijing,
coming from UlaanBataar and going to Lhassa...
AT wrote:
"The UN's cultural agency, Unesco, is expected tomorrow [October 20] to approve a convention that will allow countries to protect their cultures from globalisation, despite bitter opposition from the United States...."
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Freedom of expression. Globalization. But also, cultural dignity. The bum on the street and the CFO eating his $500 dinner tonight at Bruno Jamais in Manhattan (whatever!) are equally free. One is free to complain about cultural protectionism, the other free to watch.....MTV's Jackass. Cultural difference.
I am thinking tonight about the show "Jackass" on MTV. Some people are easily won over by such home-grown entertainment as "WWF Smackdown" and "Jackass". Bad taste has a way of driving out good--that's just how it is, empirically speakin'. It is more than a question of taste, of preferring a Whopper over Chicken Chow Mein. This kind of crap, while being a great example of freedom of cultural expression, really undermines something in society. Global society. I don't know what exactly it undermines, but I think it undermines something. I'm a social liberal, 23 out of 24 hours a day, and I can handle (and even enjoy!) Jackass. But--a world without Jackass would not be a terribly diminished world. Taking cultural exception to it is not necessarily (though it can be) the sign of puritanical, protectionist thinking. No, you can't always turn the TV off. Doesn't work that way. Jackass is there, subconsciously, globally, in the street, on your cell-phone ringer, at the office, and in your bedroom, even if you turn it off.
Jackass is just a vehicle, a means, for the shareholders of Disney, or Time Warner or GE or whoever (hard to keep track these days), to pack their dividend. I am all for higher dividends and freedom of expression. But this incrementally higher dividend comes at the expense of something intangible in the community. Global self-dignity? Who knows. So, Jackass perhaps has less to do with freedom of expression, and much more to do with the Armani and Patek Philippe people eating those $500 dinners at Bruno Jamais in Manhattan--who will not, I suppose, be watching Jackass tonight.
Crazy world....
Alex T Boston/ Hanover St.
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